


Sugar and Spice

by Nenalata



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Bad Puns, Baking, Bossy Lysithea, Crushes, F/M, Indirect Kiss, Just one but I think I'm funny, Post A-Support (Fire Emblem), Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Pre-Relationship, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, get it? because sugar, hehehehe just like a shoujo manga
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:22:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23550751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nenalata/pseuds/Nenalata
Summary: “You can’t possibly have forgotten your promise five years ago, can you?” Felix's persistent dumbstruck expression spoke otherwise. Lysithea lifted her chin and stared him dead on. “ How utterly responsible! You promised that I could teach you baking. Cake-baking, to be precise.”Lysithea reminds Felix how much he likes cake. She'd forgotten, however, how much she likeshim.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Lysithea von Ordelia, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Lysithea von Ordelia
Comments: 10
Kudos: 46





	Sugar and Spice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WriterSine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriterSine/gifts).



> A long-overdue commission for my good pal WriterSine! Thank you for sticking by me through this hectic time, not just as my commissioner, but as one of my dear, dear friends. I hope some sugary-sweet Felisithea fluff was worth the wait!
> 
> [Here is the recipe to the cake](https://www.thelittleepicurean.com/2016/02/red-wine-chocolate-cake.html), by the by. It's one of my faves ;)

“You! I knew you’d be here!”

Felix, mouth stuffed full of strips of dried pheasant, peeked out from behind the pantry door with little more than “Hmmphfrh?” as greeting. Lysithea scampered over in a mature fashion. Felix swallowed his gamey snack and glared. Lysithea felt it was more confused than hostile. “Are you following me?”

“Don’t be obtuse.” She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “You always finish training at this hour. It was only too easy to guess you'd have stirred up an appetite and sought to raid the kitchens.”

The ghost of a smirk flitted across Felix’s face. He hid it behind the cupboard door once more before Lysithea’s heart could beat more than three times too fast at the sight. “So you _were_ following me.”

“W-well, anyone would notice muscle-building provisions vanishing so quickly after you train. So what if I’m more observant than most?” But he didn’t scold her past that, nor did he shoo her away. It counted as a victory; more importantly, now she'd trapped him in the pantry. Felix leaned against the cupboard and matched her posture, crossed arms for crossed arms.

“Did you want something of me? Or are you content to know who took all the meat _you_ don’t eat?” His eyes widened as comprehension dawned. “Unless…you’re not going to make me eat another cake, are you?”

_Perfect._

“No.” His narrowed eyes and intense scrutiny warmed her cheeks. “It may shock you to learn I don’t even have any cake at present.”

“Ah, that’s too bad. Was hoping you had something interesting for me.” Felix sighed and uncrossed his arms. He shoved himself off the cupboard, making to brush past her.

“Now, hold right there!” Lysithea threw out her arms, blocking his exit with the full extent of her capabilities.

Her ‘full extent’ wasn’t much. Lysithea was rather short. Felix was rather tall. And now, with Felix right up against her quicker than her clever arm-shaped trap had accommodated, looming over her small frame, like he was big and strong enough to push her aside, or close…

Lysithea knew her cheeks were aflame when she said, “I won’t make you eat another cake. _We_ will eat a cake.”

Felix, a man with a quick temper and a sharp tongue to match— _just like her_ , she couldn’t help but compare—seemed struck speechless. Lysithea pounced on the unexpected opportunity.  
“You can’t possibly have forgotten your promise five years ago, can you?” His persistent dumbstruck expression spoke otherwise. “How utterly irresponsible! ‘A knight of Faerghus never goes back on his word;’ isn’t that something you always say?”

That snapped him out of it. “I’m no _knight of Faerghus_ ,” Felix snarled, and as dark as his voice had dropped, Lysithea shivered at the implicit challenge coloring the edges. “But that matters little. What did I promise you, Lysithea?”

She lifted her chin and stared him dead on, his eyes burning with competition. “That I could teach you baking. Cake-baking, to be precise.”

If Felix had seemed baffled before his brief interlude of irritation, now he seemed positively flabbergasted.

“And, although you’ve _clearly_ forgotten, I'll forgive you. _If_...”

Time stood still, much longer than it had any right. Felix’s befuddlement froze on his face. Was she doomed? Were these the last moments in their rel—friendship before Felix’s exhaled scoff blew her across the kitchen with its force?

“Fine,” Felix said, and Lysithea tried to wrangle her smile into something ‘elegantly coy,' not ‘manically delighted.’

“You’ll love it,” she promised.

“We’ll see.”

 _That_ was a challenge if she'd ever heard one. But even Lysithea knew when to keep her thoughts to herself. No, she kept that 'elegantly coy' smile on her face, saying nothing more than, “I’ve already done the hard part and decided on a cake. All _you_ have to do is make it.”

Felix followed her to the counters, where all manner of pots, pans, tins, and cookery awaited them. He eyed each suspiciously, like any one of them could suddenly draw arms and attack.

Actually, Lysithea speculated, such a possibility would probably comfort him than anything. “Swords away,” she declared. “Baking doesn’t demand such crude tools. You’ll wind up knocking it against the counter and ruining everything.”

Felix raised an eyebrow but obediently unhooked his sheathe from his belt, laying it flat on an empty counter. Lysithea wasn’t foolish enough to assume he didn’t have more weapons hidden away, but that wasn’t a thought she wanted to dwell on overmuch.

Regardless, she was pink with pleasure when she drew him closer to the pantry. “I assumed we’d make a chocolate cake,” she said.

“Chocolate’s oversweet,” Felix immediately objected. Lysithea tried and failed to repress an exasperated sigh.

“Don’t be obstinate,” she said, managing not to wax poetic on how chocolate was _very_ much _not_ a sweet substance. “We’ll mix red wine in with the batter; that’ll cut the sweetness of the cake while shaping the bitterness of the cocoa.”

Ooh, but her mouth was salivating already.

Sparks of interest finally lit up Felix’s amber eyes, too. “You’re speaking of baking like it’s blacksmithing,” he said. Lysithea caught the faintest, prettiest little curve to his lips and turned away to fiddle with crockery, quick as a flashfire and twice as red.

“You’re mocking me, but I suppose it _is_ similar enough,” she sniffed. “Not that I’d know of such... _things_.”

"Well," Felix said, inspecting the ingredients she was tossing from the pantry onto the counters, "I know nothing of baking. We're both at a disadvantage."

"No, _you_ are," she said smugly. She shoved a flour sack at him, and when he stumbled under its weight, puffs of white powder dotted his shirt. "Don't you like having an edge over your opponents?"

That faint, pretty smile again. "You're my _opponent_ , are you?"

"An ally," Lysithea corrected him. Utensils and measuring cups jingled onto the countertops from more cupboards. Felix's amusement vanished, replaced by Lysithea might call 'panic' if she didn't know better. "At least for now. Scoop four cupfuls of this, now."

"'Four?' 'This?' Be clear."

"The flour! That you're holding! Must I spell everything out for you?"

Lysithea wasn't sure she'd ever seen him smile so much, nor in such quick succession. "You could _sword_ everything out instead. Never been much for spellwork."

Her jaw positively dropped. Felix took advantage of her speechlessness to dump four cups of flour into a large bowl. "So? What next, Master Cakesmith?"

Lysithea shook herself, wiped the silly grin from her own lips, and mustered her usual confidence. One would think it'd be easier to do after being called a _master_ of any task, but the loud throb of her stupid, racing heartbeat distracted her. "Uh. Now we add...a pinch of salt."

Felix raised his eyebrows. "Salt? I thought this was a cake."

"It's a balance! You can't properly enjoy the nuances of 'sweet' without comparing it to the bitter comparison of 'savory!'" Lysithea shoved the jar of salt his way. He took it without further complaint.

"More complicated than I thought. Interesting."

"'Cakesmithing' indeed," Lysithea muttered. She uncorked another jar, this one of sugar, and searched about for a proper knife to open the wine bottle.

"Did you say something?"

"I said, you're not adding enough," Lysithea said louder. "Now, take some of this butter..."

Felix proved an adept student, and one who whined less that she had feared. He argued with her only once, when she insisted they simply _must_ add _this_ much cocoa, and _no_ , it would certainly _not_ be overly sweet (as if there even was such a thing, but she kept this infallible opinion to herself).

"Now what?" Felix asked once they finally shoved the batter in the oven.

"We make the icing and soaking syrup!" Lysithea clapped her hands in delight. Felix raised a brow, and she immediately tossed her hair over her shoulders in a smooth, dismissive gesture that functioned equally well at hiding her embarrassed blush. "And before you go on some slanderous tirade against the creamy deliciousness that is chocolate icing, allow me to remind you for the umpteenth time about _balance_. The soaking syrup may be sweet, yes, but it's also reduced with the same red wine. And the icing—deceptively, elegantly sugary as it may be—is tempered by the hint of bitter chocolate you like so much."

"I never said anything about liking chocolate," Felix shot right back, but this time, less heat charged the complaint.

"Now you're just being difficult. Let's get to it."

Felix rolled his eyes. "You're bossier than Ingrid," he said, but he followed her instructions with more grin than grumble.

By the time the cake had cooled enough for Lysithea to demonstrate the delicate process of painting the layers of cake with their light syrup and smoothing the icing all over the outside, Felix was as focused on their shared kitchen task as Lysithea had never seen outside the training grounds. The careful way he held the knife, its flat smoothing the edges of the iced cake with as much deadly precision as his strikes...The satisfied gleam in his eyes when they'd both suppressed any remaining hopeful air bubbles ruining the chocolate's symmetry, just like when he'd disarmed a particularly skilled opponent...The soft, affectionate grin quirking his lips when he complimented their teamwork, just like...just like...

Lysithea had no comparison for _that_ expression, at least.

"We did well," he said. Words, for once, failed her. Lysithea could only hope to nod. Felix nodded, too, but his gesture was aimed at the cake, combined with an expectant wave of his hand its direction. "So? Didn't you want to eat it?"

Lysithea came back to herself with a jolt. "No," she declared. "I said I wanted _you_. Uh, to eat it."

"Hmm." Felix fixed her with a critical eye. She squared her shoulders and tilted her chin, _daring_ him to argue after all the effort she'd put into ensuring they— _he_ enjoyed himself. If, after all this trouble, he teased her skills and childish tastes further, Lysithea was quite certain she would kill him.

Maybe shed some mortified tears, too. But only in the privacy of her own room, eating the stupid cake straight from the pan with an oversized spoon.

"No," Felix finally said, and the only thing keeping Lysithea from setting him as ablaze as her cheeks was because of how quickly he added with that heartbreakingly lovely smirk, "I want _you_ to have the first bite. It was a gift, after all. Wouldn’t want to be rude.”

Warm pleasure smothered Lysithea’s gasp. She snatched the fork he offered her— _two, he was holding two, how had she not noticed_ —and grumbled, "Since when have you _not_ wanted to be rude?”

He huffed a laugh. "Something to be said for balance." Lysithea's eyebrows shot straight up alongside her pulse. She prepared to stab into the cake to save herself from responding, but Felix knocked the tines of her fork with his with enough force, gentle as it was, to shove it away. "Rude indeed," he chided her softly.

Her scowl fell back into its natural spot without hesitation. She watched Felix slice them equal portions and deposit them on two plates. Well, at least he wasn't giving himself a tiny piece, but she _would_ have appreciated a larger one.

Felix scooped a bite-sized piece onto his fork. Plenty of icing, plenty of cake, plenty of syrup. The perfect size for the perfect proportion of flavor; Lysithea could hardly object to such precision.

 _Hardly_.

Lysithea opened her mouth to voice her criticisms and found it otherwise occupied by that wonderfully flawless little bite of cake and the slightest metallic tang of Felix’s fork. “Mmmm,” she inadvertently moaned. The fork retreated.

When she opened her eyes—when had she closed them?—Felix’s eyes had widened past the point of ‘surprised’ and well into the territory of ‘excited.’ Crumbs dotted the corners of his mouth. Lysithea didn’t bother to check her stare when those chocolatey, red-stained lips smiled at her, more meaningful than any five-years-late promise, but just as desired.

“I suppose it tastes good,” Felix said with a gruffness Lysithea knew to mean pleasure, “because we made it together. It’s better that way.”

Lysithea slammed her hands over her mouth to muffle a shameful squeak, and Felix’s cheeks exploded in color, crimson as the leftover wine in their glasses.

“I meant—don’t—ugh, you know what I meant,” Felix grumbled, shoveling more cake into his mouth to shut himself up.

She did.

Because he’d said what he meant.

And Lysithea agreed.

She spared them both a response and followed his example, heart thumping furiously each time more cake disappeared onto Felix’s tongue, speared on the fork he’d fed her with.

Balanced by more sweetness than bitterness.


End file.
